


All These Punishments

by Taste_of_Suburbia



Series: an unquiet mind [12]
Category: From Paris with Love (2010)
Genre: Accidental Death, Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Angst, Be Careful What You Wish For, Blood Loss, Communication Failure, Depression, Established Relationship, Family, Fated Deaths, Fear, Friendship, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Murder, Insecurity, Lust, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, Panic Attacks, Paranoia, Partners to Lovers, Pillow Talk, Prophetic Visions, Romance, Self-Hatred, Self-Worth Issues, Sleep Deprivation, Suicide, Time Loop, Trope Bingo Round 13, h/c_bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 13:56:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20818400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_of_Suburbia/pseuds/Taste_of_Suburbia
Summary: It was funny, when Wax was busy giving him all these things, how Reece could only think of all the punishments that might be waiting for him, punishments for things he had no right to wish for.And how these punishments, sooner or later, would bring him down to his knees.





	All These Punishments

**Author's Note:**

> Written for h/c_bingo for the prompt [Hostages;](https://immolate-the-silence.dreamwidth.org/34933.html) I interpreted the prompt as giving hostages to fortune, or placing oneself in a position that will lead to future misfortune. Also written for Trope Bingo for the prompt [Time Loops.](https://immolate-the-silence.dreamwidth.org/37096.html)
> 
> **Series:** an unquiet mind
> 
> _Updated 2/22/20:_ **Miniseries [part 1]:** All these punishments lead us to destructive behavior, beckoning unreasonable fury, staying our hand from madness so we can fight another season and poison the source
> 
> **Soundtrack:** Lyrics are from SRSQ’s ‘The Martyr’

_~The rain falls around me, and from beyond a distant fog_

_Come shadows that could render us asunder_

_The waves crash around me, pulling toward the deepest dark_

_I struggle just to keep from going under~_

* * *

Reece didn’t choose this life.

He’d always wanted to do more,  _be _ more, and he did choose the agency for means of purpose and security and maybe even his ego getting a little bit in the way, but he’d never chosen to receive these visions, these  _prophecies _ that he couldn’t turn off. Reece was book-smart rather than street-smart, he could speak half a dozen languages fluently and a half dozen more rudimentary enough to get by, he was a thinker rather than a fighter, emotional and vulnerable and indecisive in all the worst ways. 

And still Charlie Wax chose  _him _ as a partner. 

When they had first started working together, Reece had seen himself as nothing more than an assignment for Wax. Stripping through all his denial, he suspected Wax had meant the same to him, just a means to prove himself and work himself up the ladder. It was selfish, sure, but Wax wasn’t the most selfless guy either.

Losing his first partner had been… traumatic; it was a period of Reece’s life that he couldn’t talk to anyone about save in mandatory therapy sessions. He’d never thought about getting a second partner before the agency had assigned him one without his go ahead. Being with Wax was anything  _but _ traumatic: he was brash and loud and irritating, he would make Reece roll his eyes and huff and occasionally want to tear his hair out, but he was understanding and sympathetic too, in the quiet moments between firefights and shootouts and chase sequences. Reece could just sit beside him and not have to worry about doing or saying anything, not have to face an insurmountable wall of expectation. 

And then the visions came back as if Wax had clicked them all back into place.

Looking back on it now, Reece  _knew _ it was something he couldn’t have faced without Wax. He grounded him in a way his first partner had never been able to, understood Reece’s visions from the little he could remember and relay, patiently and adeptly rolled with each one even though Reece was the one in a million who had received this gift, this  _curse, _ this promise that Reece could never escape this life but that Wax could, anytime he wanted to. 

Reece had never been one for making attachments. He’d always looked for a bigger, newer picture and for better ways of doing things, the opportunity to take on a challenge and prove himself. He hadn’t gone looking for Wax and he hadn’t expected to find him.

But now that he had, he was the one attachment that Reece didn’t need.

* * *

Rain was pounding the windows, a full moon lighting them up like drops of silver as they met the glass. Reece was safe on the other side, fingers curled against the lever even though he had no intention of opening the window when his body was still warm from his latest shower. He could hear the air conditioner working too hard in the background, though he could also hear Wax as he rinsed off the last of their plates and loaded the dishwasher.

It was… comforting, domestic in a way that Reece would never associate with Wax, but his partner could be a lot of things. He had secrets that Reece was only just now beginning to unravel. Every once in a while when Reece wasn’t expecting it, Wax would do something surprising like show Reece that he could want different things, lead different lives, slow down a little even while Reece’s head was still spinning.

In a life becoming increasingly dangerous and complicated, Reece could use a little normal from time to time.

Maybe Wax felt the same way too, except that Reece would never risk losing it by asking him outright.

So he was selfish: he would cook and Wax would take care of the dishes or vice versa; he would slide up onto the bar-stool and drink a glass or two of wine while he laughed at Wax’s outrageous, obviously exaggerated stories; he would consistently try to get Wax to turn his loud, obnoxious music down and halfheartedly push him away when Wax tried to lead him into a waltz right on the dining room floor. He would be in the moment as much as he possibly could as if they were merely best friends bunking together, as if they were only boyfriends who told each other about their day while they ate dinner together, no talk of monsters or hunting, just a domestic simplicity that Reece had never dared to hope for before Wax.

They only had the days in-between cases, the hours where they ran out of agency talk, the moments where they didn’t have to be hunters. It was when his visions weren’t fighting him for his time and always winning against Wax.

It was when Wax could just be his, not just his partner, not just a means to an end or an added incentive but just selfishly  _his. _

They’d had pillow talks before when Reece couldn’t quite work out something about a case in his head and ran it by Wax, or when they were pouring over material in bed and found a half-detail that was interesting, but Reece never really talked about his visions with Wax other than quickly explaining them so they would no longer remain a ticking time bomb in his head.

Then again, with Wax, there was always a first time for everything.

“Do you ever think, Wax, that if I didn’t have these visions then we wouldn’t be partners?”

He had heard Wax come up behind him before fingers even touched his waist. No longer tempted by secrecy, his partner lunged for him and pulled him close, those same fingers scrambling underneath his robe. “Hmm?” He purred into Reece’s ear and from how chill he was, Reece knew he hadn’t heard the question, too consumed by his own unquenchable thirst.

Reece wondered whether he should even bother, but then he realized that he’d never be able to relax until he got some of this off his mind, no matter how good Wax may be at distracting him. “Would we still be partners if I didn’t have these visions?”

Wax froze, his breath tickling Reece’s right earlobe, his fingers holding Reece’s bathrobe together now rather than prying it apart. Reece swallowed and couldn’t fail to notice how the rain seemed to pick up in intensity. “You think you mean so little to me?”

Of course, Wax didn’t get it. It wasn’t how Wax would leave him, it was that the agency would reassign them, or that Wax never would have been assigned to Reece in the first place if Reece wasn’t some government trained psychic assassin, the emphasis being on psychic and not on assassin. Wax didn’t care about the visions, not really, not even with the boost they gave his reputation.

It took a long time for Reece to realize that, for Reece to realize that Wax just wanted him, no frills, no incentives, no bonuses, just  _him_ . 

“No, it’s not that, it’s just that… do the visions really make me who I am? Can I do any of what I do without them?”

Wax started kissing his neck and then the curve of his throat, trying to make Reece melt and drift off into a better place, trying to ensure he would stop thinking, but the trouble with Reece was that he  _never _ stopped thinking. “Is this what you think about all day? Is  _this _ what bothers you?”

_And nothing bothers you, huh? _ He wanted to ask but swallowed instead. He was tired of getting into petty little arguments with Wax that led nowhere and amounted to nothing. If Wax didn’t obsess over stupid things then he was better off for it. 

That didn’t mean Reece could shut his brain off.

“I know I’m not worthless to the agency, it’s just… how much more worthless would I be without the visions?”

Wax fell to his knees then, settling between Reece’s legs and nearly cutting him off. Reece gasped as his partner’s mouth found its target, arousing him as he expertly sucked and licked at sweat dampened skin. Mouth red and raw, licking his lips, Wax grinned up at him like a cat caught devouring cream. “I know you make me happy.” Reece felt his knees start to weaken, his legs trembling into a state of wobbling jello. “I know you make me smile so fucking much that my cheeks honest to Christ start hurting. I know you like to taunt and tease me in your own way, despite denying it, and that it drives me mad.” Wax’s hands smoothed over his legs, alternately pinching and rubbing, pressing languid kisses into reddened skin. “I know that I can barely be around other people when we’re together ‘cause you make me so goddamn horny.” And Reece’s dick gave a painful start at that, throbbing, betraying Reece’s eagerness for Wax’s attention. “ And I know I don’t want anyone else at my back, on their knees…”

“Okay, Wax!” He groaned as Wax took him into his mouth, all for the space of four seconds before pulling back. “Is that all you think about,” he panted, grasping onto the window ledge with one hand and onto Wax with the other, “sex?”

“Among other things.”

Wax went back to his ministrations and Reece held onto him for dear life. If anyone could make him forget his last dangerous train of thought, it was Charlie Wax.

* * *

Later in bed that night, the doubts came bubbling back up to the surface when Reece was all too vulnerable splayed on top of Wax, heartbeat shifting from a gentle hum to the onset of thunder.

Wax stirred, eyes opening to greet him in their familiar warmth. “You good?”

Reece nodded. “Just thinking.”

Wax’s fingers brushed through his sweat dampened hair until Reece realized that he was waiting, eyes both affectionate and chastising. “Can’t turn that brain of yours off, can I?”

“You did,” Reece grinned. “For a while there.”

Wax shifted underneath him eagerly as if accepting a challenge Reece hadn’t meant to offer him. Oh well. Get Wax onto an idea and he was all over it. “Let’s see how long I can make it last this time, huh? Gotta get you tired enough to relax and drop off, don’t I?”

Reece didn’t move, merely let Wax push him this way and that until he was flat on his back underneath him, until he could splay his legs out and until Wax was close enough for Reece to grasp his sides to balance himself.

He felt something stir at the far edge of his consciousness, the onset of a vision that he pushed aside in trembling frustration.  _Not now. _ He pleaded, despite knowing that they never took a back seat just because Reece was busy experiencing real life, the good parts of it anyway.  _I don’t want them anymore, these visions. I’d do anything not to have them. I’d give anything. Just make them go away…_

Reece was jolted out of his head by Wax’s beard scratching against his chin, his slick fingers gliding up and down Reece’s already half-hard dick, his mouth a burning weight at Reece’s exposed throat.

It was funny, when Wax was busy giving him all these things, how Reece could only think of all the punishments that might be waiting for him, punishments for things he had no right to wish for.

And how these punishments, sooner or later, would bring him down to his knees.

* * *

Reece flipped through the newspaper idly, unable to shake the suspicion that he’d read something similar to these articles the day prior, cursing his head for feeling fuzzy and the publishers for putting out nearly identical material day after day. Wax was yanking out the inner pieces of a baguette directly across from him, scowling all the while as he sorted through half a dozen types of cheese for the eighth or so time.

“I hate the food in this country. It’s all croissants and baguettes and that shitty cocoa hazelnut crap. I can’t find me any damn good energy drinks or candy bars or even pie. I mean, who the fuck doesn’t want pie?”

_For breakfast? _ Reece thought, even though he’d been picking at his soggy cereal for the last fifteen minutes and a slice of pie definitely sounded better than what was currently in front of him. “That’s because your palette isn’t refined enough,” Reece quipped. He finally closed the newspaper and handed it over to Wax, who he knew wanted it as badly as he wanted something mouthwatering to devour. Other than Reece, that is. 

Wax gazed across the small table at him in mild exasperation. “You seem tired. Surprising, given we didn’t get up to much last night.”

Reece almost spat out his mouthful of bitter coffee. “Are you kidding? You were like a… like a… shark or something.”

Wax rolled his eyes. “Clearly your stamina isn’t what it used to be.”

Reece’s mouth dropped, but it wasn’t for long as he opted for another sip of terrible coffee. Clearly, Wax was on something. They’d gone three and a half rounds last night before Reece was certain that last half would put him firmly into the sphere of ‘blacking out more times than is healthy,’ even for someone his age. It amazed him that Wax thought Reece was lacking in stamina; then again, Wax would beat virtually everyone in a competition of stamina or strength or endurance or whatever really. No one could match his voracious sexual appetite.

Still, Reece thought he had kept up well-enough, better than he usually did.

“Never mind,” he sulked, getting up to dump the rest of his coffee. “We getting a new case today?” It had been weighing on his mind all morning, the fact that this next case would be the eighth in a row without a break, without ample time in the morning to brew decent coffee or even tie his shoes, without a space to breathe…

Wax dropped the paper, oozing annoyance. “We’ve got our reports to write, remember?”

Funny, but Reece was  _sure_ Wax had wrote his yesterday, or at least most of it, and Reece  _definitely _ had finished his and gone over it a handful of times for good measure. “I finished mine yesterday.”

“Let’s see it then,” Wax demanded, like he went through every one of Reece’s reports when Reece didn’t think he’d ever been through  _one. _

Ten minutes later after having poured through notebook after notebook, Reece found that surprisingly he hadn’t written it after all.

* * *

It wasn’t Reece’s only occurrence of deja vu that day.

There were the same line of customers stretching out in front of him in the coffee shop he had frequented week after week as there had been yesterday, the same array of colors and the same ridiculously convoluted orders and Reece still the fifteenth in line, eyeing the same batch of scones and croissants and other pastries with the same lack of enthusiasm as yesterday.

Then again, he  _had _ been to this spot more than once. Several times a week, usually, when Wax tolerated it. 

“I’ll take the usual,” Reece responded to the barrista’s expectant stare.

“The usual what?”

Crumpled five dollar bill in his hand, Reece swallowed down the roar in his ears, smiled uneasily, apologized and ordered a simple, uncomplicated cappuccino.

* * *

“Did we go get coffee out yesterday?” Reece asked Wax, nerves buckling up against the impending onset of hysteria.

“Hell no,” Wax replied, devouring the rest of his croissant and making a face. “We drank the same old sludge from the coffeepot like we always do.”

So it wasn’t just deja vu then. What Wax was telling him was that he had never been to that coffee shop before. What he was saying was that… “When I had a vision that day and spilled hot coffee over my hand and you… you threw those small napkins at me like I was on fire…”

The look on Wax’s face  _hurt_ , like Reece was making no sense, like all of Reece’s world was being torn down like strips of wallpaper. “Vision, Reece? What vision? What the hell are you talking about?”

And when Reece searched,  _really _ pushed his head to respond to his desperation, there was nothing lying in wait, no feeling of darkness, no flickering at the edge of his vision as if to taunt him, to remind him that he was no more than a slave to what the universe had gifted him. He was just… normal, just Reece. 

There was nothing there at all to make him different than anyone else.

Wax’s easy distraction was now shattered. He looked at Reece as if he was seeing him for the first time and Reece wondered even now when and how that was. If Wax hadn’t been handpicked to  _deal _ with a psychic, given his history, then how the hell had they been assigned together at all? 

_But this is what you wanted, idiot. You said no to the visions and they agreed. _

How had they agreed, though? What would happen to all the people who he was supposed to save today - the today that should have been - and tomorrow and all the days after? What had happened to those he had already saved? Had he saved them at all, without his visions?

_But this is absurd. It’s not like I have any control over the visions. If I can’t get them to slow down then how could I possibly get them to stop? _

“Does this have to do with what the agency said about psychics?” Wax asked and Reece was instantly snapped out of his reverie. “‘Cause if it is, they ain’t nothing to worry about. Sure, they got out of line for a time, but the agency reeled them back in and put ‘em all down. It’s just a cautionary tale, Reece. They want to prepare us for what’s out there, what  _had _ been out there, but these seers are all long dead and buried or, hell, burnt to a crisp now. Good thing too, dangerous is what they were. Put a few down myself. It was just what had to be done. No one should have that amount of power, that ability to see into the future. Not only is it creepy but it’s against nature. We’ve weapons enough as it is, good ones, without ever having needed them.”

_I’ve put a few down myself… it was just what had to be done… long dead and buried and burnt… against nature…_

_I’ve put a few down myself. _

That was what Reece had become: history. There were too many words, more words than Wax usually spoke, so many words that ran dizzying loops in Reece’s head, spinning and spinning and careening into each other and…

_In this universe, in this alternate reality, whatever the hell it is, I would have been killed. _

_And Wax would have killed me. _

“Reece?”

Before Reece could respond with words he didn’t know, words that wouldn’t make him sound any less delusional, there was a crack of thunder that sliced through all the hurt in his head, leaving Reece with nothing to ground him in this reality. There was the overpowering stench of burning flesh that singed Reece’s nose and the realization that he had never responded to Wax.

Lighting striking his partner a second time, ensuring he went down, Reece was thrown back as if bearing the familiar reminder that he was the universe’s puppet, _ always_ , as if Wax was a gift that could be given and taken away. He hit his head hard on rain-soaked concrete, reeling in pain and reeling from panic and breathing in the bruising reality. 

_Anything that can be given can be taken away…_

* * *

_~A dream world, a glory, a call from the depths of hell_

_I’m sickened by the terrible reminder_

_A fantasy, a fool’s escape, a hopefulness, a sweet embrace_

_Illusions that this horror is behind us~_

* * *

He skipped the coffee line today and bore Wax’s complaints over his buttery, flaky pastry. They were still inside, so it wasn’t like lightning could touch Wax, but Reece was on edge regardless.

He had slowed down his morning routine to a near crawl and stalled as long as possible, though it seemed his partner’s mind was following a similar course today. As little as Reece could pull his thoughts together, he sat down and decided to start writing his report a  _third _ time, barely able to remember all the details and continuously whittling down his eraser as he took away and added just as quickly as drawing in panicked breath after panicked breath. 

“You don’t have to do that now,” Wax’s voice echoed from their small kitchen. “If it’s upsetting you  _that _ much.” Clearly, Wax had been able to see his irritation. Reece paused in response, reading over what he had wrote for the twentieth or so time. “And slow down on the coffee while you’re at it!” Reece’s attention flicked up to the coffee table at that, littered with coffee stained mugs and stray granules of sugar. Without even realizing what he was doing, he finished the mug closest to him, lukewarm coffee drying his throat to unkind sandpaper shreds. 

Reece would have reveled in the reprieve of no headaches verging on migraines, no nausea, no being down on the floor or pressed tightly back against a wall, no retreating into cool darkness trying to concentrate and failing to hide.

He would have reveled in  _finally _ feeling an equal to Wax, not a step simultaneously ahead and behind his partner as he tried to make sense of and explain his visions, not pressed down onto his knees with a partner trying to keep his head above water both literally and figuratively. 

He no longer went where Wax couldn’t follow, no longer saw what Wax would never see, no longer let his body be subjected to tortures that Wax didn’t have to withstand or heal or soothe.

He would have reveled if not for the choice he had made, the one that he never realized he had made at all.

The choice between enduring the visions and having Wax.

Still, Wax was  _still _ here, now, still here until he wasn’t…

“I was thinking,” Reece dared despite knowing that he shouldn’t, that the universe or fate or whatever power loomed over him now - had  _always _ loomed over him - would punish him regardless… probably. “About what the agency said about  _psychics _ the other day.”

Despite being in an entirely different room, he could sense Wax’s mood without needing to even read his expression. “Still dwellin’ on that, huh? Why the sudden interest in psychics, Reece?”

_Because I am… _ was  _one. _

_Because you told me once that it didn’t matter, that I could never scare you away…_

_Because, after all, it did lead me to you. _

Reece put down the eraser and tucked his trembling hands under couch cushions. “No reason.”

He cringed, waiting for the lightning as he had every morning ten times over. He’d stopped counting a handful of times ago, stopped scanning their apartment for random things that Wax could trip over.

He stopped trying to be strong and capable and a step ahead because he  _wasn’t. _

He’d asked Wax a dozen times over and never got a different response, never heeded the warning and plunged straight ahead anyway, feeling more than anything else that there was something in this line of conversation, something he was missing…

“They’re dead and gone, Reece. The agency just couldn’t leave ‘em in the past ‘cause, well, ‘cause they’re an important part of our past. An important part of how we failed as hunters. We trusted them until we realized just how dangerous they could be. I don’t blame you wanting to know more, or even being scared, but the agency has always gotten involved to protect us. We serve them and they protect us.”

Reece had never thought about that before, about following the agency blindly, going along with whatever cases they were assigned to on the occasions where Reece’s visions went on temporary vacation. He had always felt protected, with Wax more than with anyone or anything else, and he’d always felt as if he had a purpose, a  _good _ and worthwhile purpose. It had never been the visions that had provided that - although Reece realized now how they always had, just not in the way he’d wanted - but the  _agency. _

Reece had gotten into this life  _because _ of the agency. 

He’d wanted to turn tail and run because of the visions.

_We serve them and they protect us…_

_Wax protects me, I can’t protect Wax…_

Something slammed against the window and Reece jumped, heart squeezing painfully in his chest.  _So this is how it will happen this time. And if I get involved it’ll be worse for Wax, it’ll take longer, it’ll hurt more in the long run. _

_Though that’s never stopped me. _

He wrenched his hands out from underneath the stifling cushions and rose, following a good handful of steps behind Wax until another crash resounded, followed by the ear-splitting crunch of glass breaking.

For all it physically hurt, it could easily have been Reece’s sanity shattering.

It always happened so  _fast…_

Wax was wrenched out of the window, Reece’s fingers only just grasping the very edge of his jacket before it was gone. He fell forward but Wax was wrenched further away from him faster than he could follow.

Though Reece did follow.

His hand slid around Wax’s wrist, a cruel moment of hope and then a jagged shard of ice plunged into his chest as he lost contact.

Reece was certain that it was Wax who had let go. Reece wouldn’t have let go.

He couldn’t have let go…

* * *

“I hate the food in this goddamn country. It’s all croissants and baguettes and that shitty cocoa…”

A heart-attack, Reece pounding on Wax’s chest for a heartbeat that would not resound.

“I hate the food in this goddamn country. It’s all croissants and baguet…”

Choking, gasping, wheezing, Reece’s hands tight across Wax’s stomach.

“I hate the food in this goddamn...”

The sharp crack of impact and a profusely bleeding head wound. Reece’s fingers digging into blood soaked tile as his vision clouds and he hyperventilates.

“I hate…”  _you. That’s right, Wax. Hate me all you want, please, because it is all my fault. I did this. I wished and this is the universe’s answer. Hate me hate me hate me. Please hate me. Though you’ll never hate me as much as I hate myself. _

Wax falls over and over again, like it’s only a stage act and he a performer, Reece opening his eyes time and time again to find Wax’s grinning face, laughing at Reece’s slipping grip on reality.

_Then again is there even such a thing as reality? _

Reece drowns in the cold and the quiet and the dark and the bitter taste of hopelessness.

* * *

They made it further than they usually did, the mid-day sun pounding their backs and assaulting their eyes and Wax more impatient and obviously more sex-deprived than he should have been. Meaning, of course, that they were working a case and Wax’s wants shouldn’t trump everything else but they always did.

Now that they were at that stage where they could forgo self-consciousness and pride and patience but never hedonism and carelessness, Wax  _certainly _ took advantage. 

Wax pushed Reece closer towards the roped off section of the museum, steering him into the blood splattered room that had, yes, been the scene of a murder the night prior. A night that Reece could no longer remember. He hadn’t lived a night since…

Anyway, thinking being a chore Reece no longer had to subject himself to since this whole  _new _ nightmare had begun, Wax got off on violence and blood and the forbidden. Reece wasn’t forbidden as such, not anymore, but one day Wax’s jumping headfirst into everything,  _especially _ lewd and salacious acts, would get the both of them into trouble. Reece went along with it with a lesser degree of protest each time, but only because Wax’s persuasiveness would always inevitably win out over Reece’s self-control. 

_What are you worrying about? You’ve only got an hour or so and maybe not even that. Enjoy it while it lasts. _

Pressed back against a wall that faced the crime scene head-on, Reece closed his eyes, pushed his hesitation firmly aside and let Wax have his way. His hands tore at Reece the same way they always did, Wax’s pulse quickening under Reece’s splayed hand the same way it always would, his smile the surest - the  _only_ \- flash of light tethering him to any semblance of reality. 

“I’m going to fuck you so hard against that shitty ass painting,” Wax crooned deviously into his ear, not for the first time. Reece had walked into this room enough times to know what painting he was talking about. Irritated at his own inane wanderings, he realized that Wax’s hand was already cupped around his cock, holding Reece’s belt in his other hand, and the harder Reece squirmed in vulnerability and from a need he couldn’t control, the more firmly Wax held onto him. “Door’s locked, museum’s closed, so why don’t you tell me all your petty little reservations for holding back?”

_Because it hurts… the more I want you… the more I _ need  _you… the more I lose you…_

_I’ve put a few down myself… they’re dead and gone and burnt and past… they’re in the past now… a cautionary tale… we serve the agency and they protect us…_

_And what’s left if I can’t protect you? _

Per Wax’s instruction, Reece couldn’t think of any reservations. He smiled and even giggled in an overpowering happiness when Wax’s head nuzzled into his belly, pressing a stream of sweet, agonizingly warm kisses there. Wax was on his knees now, gazing up at him, and Reece could see everything he wanted in life reflected back to him in those eyes, everything he had already  _had _ before he just as carelessly threw it away _. _

“Fuck, Reece, you’re the most gorgeous fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

He’d never said it  _quite _ like that before. 

There was a flash of light, the sensation of glass shattering against his back and warm blood spilling like paint all over his hands and belly and soaking through to the underneath, staining over-sensitive skin. There was the weight of Wax pressed up tightly against him and then a moment more and there was nothing there at all.

Nothing holding Reece up from collapsing in alarm and despair and the deepest well of uselessness, washing over him, suffocating...

* * *

Reece took a deep breath and stepped out onto the ledge, Wax immediately reacting behind him and  _dammit, he was supposed to be in the kitchen not this close._ It was heartbreaking to Reece because he would never understand. 

“Reece!” Reece couldn’t look back, couldn’t chance being startled enough out of his head to  _not _ do this, but he could see his partner’s expression regardless: the wide, glistening eyes; the hand going for the gun at his back before realizing this wasn’t a problem he could shoot at; the shock and hurt and betrayal as he tried to think of the right words to say to talk Reece down. “Whatever reasons you have for doing this just… don’t! Whatever you think we can’t solve, we can!” 

_So a ‘we’re partners and we’re in this together, pep talk.’_

_Oh, Wax, if only that applied here. _

Reece turned on nothing more than a foolish need, steeling himself for the admission and amazed when he gave it. “Don’t you get it, Wax? I made a wish I can’t take back. I sacrificed everything for nothing… nothing at all.”

Reece threw himself backward, Wax’s ensuing scream only  _mostly_ drowned out by the rush of air pounding his ears. 

The impact was hard and brutal, sucking the very breath right out of him. There were screams everywhere around him and Reece waited to black out, waited for the spell to be broken. He waited but it never came. It didn’t make sense that Reece could still be alive, that his body could be and feel this broken and yet he would still be able to move his head, to watch Wax run out past the doors and collide with a speeding vehicle.

He watched his partner fall, barely two feet from him.

And that was when Reece realized that there was no escape.

* * *

“Reece?”

Reece turned over, not bothering to sit up or put on a strong face for Wax. In the moments after he would blackout, time would reset but Reece never would; as a result, he was more than emotionally drained, limbs weak from sleep deprivation and head pounding from exhaustion and words running over one another unless Reece fought to keep them sensible. “I’m not getting out of bed today.” He’d played this game before,  _more _ than once and it  _still _ hadn’t spared him, but Wax was different this time, maybe not just hearing the despair in Reece’s voice but the distance too, the near complete detachment from reality. 

Wax knelt down, resting his arms on the cold sheets Reece lay underneath, unmoving, staring blankly out from. “What’s going on?”

“If we only had a handful of hours together, Wax, in all seriousness, what would you do?”

Sex, drugs, rock and roll. Or the Wax version: hard sex, even harder drugs and some Tom Jones if he was feeling  _really _ in the mood. Now, every thought came with a worst case scenario. 

Wax’s ears bleeding from the music and Reece unable to turn it off.

Wax overdosing, seizing mere inches away while Reece watched, breathless and frozen to the spot until he could move enough to fall onto the table and snort the nearest line and the next and the next, hoping this overdose would take him wherever Wax was going.

Wax fucking him until Reece saw stars and blacked out just enough to numb him but not so much that he couldn’t feel Wax’s cold body drop down beside him, a dead weight  _almost _ as heavy as Reece’s heart. 

It was the first time Reece had ever asked Wax this question, the first morning Wax hadn’t inflicted him with his wildly varying attempts to get him out of bed. Maybe Reece really  _did _ look as wretched as he felt, maybe Wax’s hand, currently resting gently over his arm, was Wax’s way of trying to get inside Reece’s head for once and figure out what was wrong. 

Just to take a moment to slow down as Wax was forever trying to get Reece to do.

Wax’s eyes were soft, softer even than the fingers ghosting over Reece’s wrist as if he knew what was to come when Reece had never spoken of it, knowing it wouldn’t break the cycle. A moment more and those eyes blazed like diamonds, lit up by fire and hardening still like shimmering stars. “I’d go out in a blaze of glory.”

Reece swallowed thickly, stomach roiling, the clock above his head ticking down to a number Reece never knew. “Wax…”

“But first I’d do whatever you wanted, Reece cup. I’d just want to be with you, if you’d have me.” Reece’s heart warmed then; he had forgot entirely what that felt like.  _Of course I’d have you, Wax. There’s no one else. _ “Why, huh? You thinkin’ it’s last days?”

_It’s been last days for a while now. _

Reece glanced up, finally making direct eye contact, pushing forward a perilous step. “Have you ever seen that movie Groundhog Day?”

Wax’s ensuing smile, indulgent as it was, still couldn’t make Reece angry. “You mean about that weatherman cursed to relive the same day until he gets it right?”

It had always been a terrifying prospect to Reece: stuck in the same endless loop until you figured out where you were going wrong, never knowing if you actually  _would _ figure it out and then if you really  _could_ change yourself in a way that was genuine and not forced because fate, the universe, whatever couldn’t be cheated. 

_How am I supposed to get _ this  _right? Am I supposed to let Wax _ go? 

“I’m a psychic, Wax. Or I was, before this. Before I woke up and started suffering this day over and over and…,” his voice cracked in over-flowing emotion and fear, the fear that he was not supposed to be doing this, to be telling Wax these things. That this was against the rules.

But he’d always been taught to trust his partner: with his life, with  _anything. _

Wax barked a choking laugh. “You ain’t no psychic, baby. Maybe in this alternate reality thingy of yours but…”

“So how did we end up together?” Reece interrupted, unphased by Wax’s complete brushing aside of the situation that held Reece suspended, gasping, like a fish above water.

“ _Together _ together or as partners?”

Not that he wasn’t curious about the first part, but it was the partners aspect of their relationship that had been worrying him. After a time, he’d figured he and Wax would always be drawn together romantically. “As partners. How did it all happen if not for my visions?”

Wax was staring at him strangely. “They showed me your file and I handpicked you.”

And meanwhile, back in the real world, the  _before _ world, Reece had been  _assigned _ to Wax even though Wax had still chosen in one sense of the word: chosen to stick by Reece and not demand another partner. 

“Just like that?”

Wax slipped his hand around Reece’s, bringing Reece’s fingers to his mouth and kissing them gently. “Just like that. Tell me, g-man, are we together in this other reality of yours?”

Reece could see the curiosity in Wax’s eyes, bleeding out all over everything else. “Yes.”

Wax’s brow furrowed. “But you’re a psychic too?”

“Hired by the agency and assigned to you. You said it was because you had a track record with seers.”

Wax paused, mouth pausing over Reece’s warming fingers. “Yeah, a track record of killing them. Reece, you  _know _ this. It’s never been a problem for you before. You read my file too, or don’t you remember that either?” 

Reece didn’t want to ask,  _please don’t let me ask, it isn’t important, it doesn’t matter, how much more can I _ take? “When does it happen, Wax? When does the agency start going after them?”  _After me, no, not _ me _, just the me that always was, the me that Wax has always stood by, the me that this Wax doesn’t know at all and could never understand…_ “Does something happen?”

Wax shifted uncomfortably. “There was an incident. It was before your time and it sure as hell is above your pay-grade.” He was firm and Reece knew that no amount of ‘tell mes’ would make him budge even an inch. At least this Wax was still trying to protect him at all costs. Some things couldn’t change, Reece supposed.

He had to smile regardless of the gravity of his partner’s unspoken words; it was more than apparent that this Wax loved him just as much as the real version did, the visions had never affected that in any way.

Wax nudged him gently. “What?”

But then the cold wormed its way back in, the ice prickling at his last reserves that not even Wax’s persistent, ever-present warmth could change.

_Is this the future? _

_Will they come after me? _

Reece fought to look at Wax, to  _really _ look at him and not at the clock, never again at the clock. “No matter what I am or what I’m not, you still love me. There’s always been a part of me that…  _doubted _ it.”  _And yet, maybe, the biggest part of me has been doubting _ me. 

_Is this the final punishment? Are these the warnings? Is the universe trying to make me let go of Wax? Is that what I’m meant to do? To let go of Wax even though he’s never let go of me? _

_In the end, at the end of everything… will Wax come after me?_

It didn’t matter because in the end, Reece was always alone, down on his knees, locked in the same mind-breaking hell-cycle, punishment after punishment taking him no closer to home.

* * *

_~A solid place, a secret want, a dream too dangerous to hold_

_Deny myself despite that I have found you_

_A shattered fist, a solid wall, continuously rise and fall_

_Ignore the dreadful thought that it’s impossible to have it all~_

* * *

**FIN**


End file.
